Hans Baumann (22 April 1914-7 November 1988) was a German poet, songwriter, and Nazi Party functionary.
Biography[]
Hans Baumann was born in Amberg, Bavaria, German Empire in 1914 to a Catholic family, and he started writing poems and songs at a young age. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933, as a Hitler Youth songwriter, author, and journalist after 1934, and the SS in 1935. He wrote the official marching song of the German Labor Front and the Christmas song Hohe Nacht der klaren Sterne, among other compositions, and he served in a Wehrmacht propaganda unit on the Eastern Front of World War II. After the war, he distanced himself from Nazism and remained a popular writer for children and teenagers, but he never fully escaped his controversial past, even being forced to return a literary award in 1962. He died in 1988.